Unequal protection: Climate change and the acceleration of global inequality

Unequal protection: Climate change and the acceleration of global inequality

20 Dec 2017

The Middle East is the planet’s most water insecure region; climate change is exacerbating this and other challenges. Photo: UNDP Iraq

Among the various drivers of risk in the world today, two stand out:
climate change and rapidly rising levels of inequality. While each by
itself has serious consequences for achieving development goals, their
convergence has become a subject of heightened attention.

The convening of climate COP23 this year under the Presidency of Fiji
has brought this issue to the fore. Climate change has now emerged as
an existential risk to the very survival of communities living in
climate risk hotspots around the world – from small island states and
low-lying coastal zones, to mountain regions experiencing wide-spread
glacial melting and the rapidly changing nature of dryland and desert
ecosystems.

Earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Council adopted, by consensus,
UN Resolution A/HRC/35/20 on Human Rights and Climate Change, calling
on member states and non-state actors from the private sector to address
the human rights of climate-affected people. This followed the
inclusion of human rights into the preamble of the new Paris Agreement
on Climate Change, a historic step as the first global environmental
treaty to do so.

The goal of such efforts by the UN and country partners is to promote
climate responses that address the most vulnerable in society,
protecting their rights to life, food, water and various other elements
of a rights-based approach to development. As noted in the UN
Resolution, those at risk of climate displacement are a priority. They
are least responsible for generating the climate crisis but their future
now rests on our ability to take climate action.

So what can countries do? A key focus needs to be on implementing
global frameworks on climate change and on human rights at the local
level; developing local capacities to bring together climate action and
the right to development for the most at-risk communities.

The Middle East serves as an important example, where we have seen
first-hand how issues of social vulnerability, rights-based approaches
and climate risks converge. The Middle East is already the planet’s most
water insecure and food import-dependent region, with climate change
exacerbating these challenges and heightening risks of displacement. The
right to food and the right to water have been among the issues at the
centre of social demands for more accountable and participatory forms of
development in recent years.

As countries move ahead to implement the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) and their National Determined Contributions (NDCs) to
climate change under the Paris Agreement, a need exists to put special
focus on the ways that climate action can address dynamics that threaten
the basic rights of society’s most vulnerable. We must support new
policies and capacities to prevent the further deepening of poverty and
inequality expected to result from climate change.

In Egypt, for example, the Nile Delta is among the regions of the
planet most at risk from rising sea levels. The Delta is both the
country’s bread basket, helping achieve goals of food security for tens
of millions, and it is also home to a large share of Egypt’s poor
population. But unless action is taken, forecasts predict that over 6
million people stand at risk of climate displacement. To address this
challenge, UNDP and the Government are now launching a new initiative,
supported by a US$31 million grant from the Green Climate Fund, to
develop local capacities for climate adaptation, to put in place
measures to protect agricultural areas and the vulnerable communities
that rely on them, and to help prevent the risk of displacement. By
doing so, we are building capacities to take action on climate change in
a way that addresses growing social vulnerability.

As we look to implement the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, more
rights-informed models of development will be critical to address the
needs of the poor and vulnerable in society, and to safeguard the right
to development in an era of climate disruption.

About the authorsJohn H. Knox is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human
rights and the environment, and an international law professor at Wake
Forest University. Follow him on Twitter: @SREnvironment

Kishan Khoday is the Regional Team Leader for Climate
Change, Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience at the UNDP Regional Hub
for Arab States. Follow him on Twitter: @KishanKhoday